AVIATION: Pay as You Fly

The new jets cruise at 550 m.p.h., but the
queues of passengers at airport ticket counters still creep at the old
snail's pace. To bring ticketing up to jet-age standards, Denver's
Continental Air Lines last month began selling tickets aloft instead of
at airports on its Boeing 707 flights between Chicago and Los Angeles.
Continental's competitors at first scoffed that the commuterlike
service would produce only confusion, but last week they banked steeply
onto Continental's course. The innovation proved so successful in
eliminating nagging airport waits (it also helped boost Continental's
revenue passenger miles 61% last month) that American...